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matters is that people would remember it, and that would give them

a clue. For this business one should be as little conspicuous as

possible.... Trifles, trifles are what matter! Why, it’s just such

trifles that always ruin everything....”

He had not far to go; he knew indeed how many steps it was from the gate

of his lodging house: exactly seven hundred and thirty. He had counted

them once when he had been lost in dreams. At the time he had put no

faith in those dreams and was only tantalising himself by their hideous

but daring recklessness. Now, a month later, he had begun to look upon

them differently, and, in spite of the monologues in which he jeered at

his own impotence and indecision, he had involuntarily come to regard

this “hideous” dream as an exploit to be attempted, although he

still did not realise this himself. He was positively going now for a

“rehearsal” of his project, and at every step his excitement grew more

and more violent.

With a sinking heart and a nervous tremor, he went up to a huge house

which on one side looked on to the canal, and on the other into the

street. This house was let out in tiny tenements and was inhabited by

working people of all kinds--tailors, locksmiths, cooks, Germans of

sorts, girls picking up a living as best they could, petty clerks, etc.

There was a continual coming and going through the two gates and in the

two courtyards of the house. Three or four door-keepers were employed on

the building. The young man was very glad to meet none of them, and

at once slipped unnoticed through the door on the right, and up the

staircase. It was a back staircase, dark and narrow, but he was familiar

with it already, and knew his way, and he liked all these surroundings:

in such darkness even the most inquisitive eyes were not to be dreaded.

“If I am so scared now, what would it be if it somehow came to pass that

I were really going to do it?” he could not help asking himself as he

reached the fourth storey. There his progress was barred by some porters

who were engaged in moving furniture out of a flat. He knew that the

flat had been occupied by a German clerk in the civil service, and his

family. This German was moving out then, and so the fourth floor on this

staircase would be untenanted except by the old woman. “That’s a good

thing anyway,” he thought to himself, as he rang the bell of the old

woman’s flat. The bell gave a faint tinkle as though it were made of

tin and not of copper. The little flats in such houses always have bells

that ring like that. He had forgotten the note of that bell, and now

its peculiar tinkle seemed to remind him of something and to bring it

clearly before him.... He started, his nerves were terribly overstrained

by now. In a little while, the door was opened a tiny crack: the old

woman eyed her visitor with evident distrust through the crack, and

nothing could be seen but her little eyes, glittering in the darkness.

But, seeing a number of people on the landing, she grew bolder, and

opened the door wide. The young man stepped into the dark entry, which

was partitioned off from the tiny kitchen. The old woman stood facing

him in silence and looking inquiringly at him. She was a diminutive,

withered up old woman of sixty, with sharp malignant eyes and a sharp

little nose. Her colourless, somewhat grizzled hair was thickly smeared

with oil, and she wore no kerchief over it. Round her thin long neck,

which looked like a hen’s leg, was knotted some sort of flannel rag,

and, in spite of the heat, there hung flapping on her shoulders, a mangy

fur cape, yellow with age. The old woman coughed and groaned at every

instant. The young man must have looked at her with a rather peculiar

expression, for a gleam of mistrust came into her eyes again.

“Raskolnikov, a student, I came here a month ago,” the young man made

haste to mutter, with a half bow, remembering that he ought to be more

polite.

“I remember, my good sir, I remember quite well your coming here,” the

old woman said distinctly, still keeping her inquiring eyes on his face.

“And here... I am again on the same errand,” Raskolnikov continued, a

little disconcerted and surprised at the old woman’s mistrust. “Perhaps

she is always like that though, only I did not notice it the other

time,” he thought with an uneasy feeling.

The old woman paused, as though hesitating; then stepped on one side,

and pointing to the door of the room, she said, letting her visitor pass

in front of her:

“Step in, my good sir.”

The little room into which the young man walked, with yellow paper on

the walls, geraniums and muslin curtains in the windows, was brightly

lighted up at that moment by the setting sun.

“So the sun will shine like this _then_ too!” flashed as it were by

chance through Raskolnikov’s mind, and with a rapid glance he scanned

everything in the room, trying as far as possible to notice and

remember its arrangement. But there was nothing special in the room. The

furniture, all very old and of yellow wood, consisted of a sofa with

a huge bent wooden back, an oval table in front of the sofa, a

dressing-table with a looking-glass fixed on it between the windows,

chairs along the walls and two or three half-penny prints in yellow

frames, representing German damsels with birds in their hands--that was

all. In the corner a light was burning before a small ikon. Everything

was very clean; the floor and the furniture were brightly polished;

everything shone.

“Lizaveta’s work,” thought the young man. There was not a speck of dust

to be seen in the whole flat.

“It’s in the houses of spiteful old widows that one finds such

cleanliness,” Raskolnikov thought again, and he stole a curious glance

at the cotton curtain over the door leading into another tiny room, in